THE DEADLIEST DISEASES THEN AND NOW

A dive into pandemics past and present published while Covid-19 continues to rage.

In the first entry in a nonfiction series focused on deadly events, Hopkinson pays particular attention to the Great Mortality, as the second exceptionally deadly assault of bubonic plague was contemporaneously known in Europe (the first began in sixth-century Constantinople). The high-interest narrative explains the value of primary sources and then makes use of them to describe the impact of this wave of the plague as it killed up to 60% of the European population beginning in 1347. Hopkinson notes that scholarship is still emerging on the plague’s impact in Asia and Africa at this time, hence the focus on Europe. Following chapters touch upon later plague outbreaks, the influenza pandemic of 1918, Covid-19, and, briefly, cholera, smallpox, polio, tuberculosis, and HIV. MERS and SARS are named in passing; the devastation of Indigenous people in the Americas does not come up. Text boxes provide additional information on vaccines, the binomial system for naming living things, and related topics. The book describes prejudice as people scapegoat certain groups during disease outbreaks, such as with medieval pogroms, but the rise in anti–Asian American violence during Covid-19 is not discussed. Although simple and reassuring enough for elementary readers, this effort never shirks grim details or skips over important information.

A useful, engaging introduction to the history of pandemics.